“Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama
administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration
Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better
metrics are pointless.”

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

OBAMA THE PERFORMER….. “Obama is playing his role in a carefully orchestrated political act.”Presenting himself as a defender of the middle class against the wealthy, Obama outlined a “jobs plan” based on a series of corporate tax give-aways that have long been championed by the Republican Party. The president made no proposals for direct job creation.*HERE’S OBAMA’S REAL JOBS PLAN: AmnestyNO E-VERIFYNEUTER I.C.E. TO BE A LA RAZA AGENCY, LIKE THE HOMELAND SECURITY=PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP.ASSAULT LEGALS IN ARIZONA FIGHTING THE LA RAZA OCCUPATION, while he turns a legal blind eye to ILLEGAL SANCTUARY CITIES ALL OVER THE NATION!

But he has created 30 desk jobs for border guards defending our open and protected borders with NARCOmex!*WHY OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS LOVE ’IM:“This ignores, for one thing, the fact that US banks and corporations are already sitting on a cash hoard of over $1 trillion.”*WSWS.org …get on their free emailsObama unveils pro-business “jobs” planBy Tom Eley 9 September 2010President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech on the economy in Cleveland, Ohio was an exercise in deceit and demagogy. Presenting himself as a defender of the middle class against the wealthy, Obama outlined a “jobs plan” based on a series of corporate tax give-aways that have long been championed by the Republican Party. The president made no proposals for direct job creation.The Cleveland speech is part of a campaign to stave off what are widely predicted to be major losses for the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. It comes on the heels of Obama’s Labor Day speech in Milwaukee and in advance of a Friday press conference on the economy.Obama’s new plan hinges almost exclusively on tax breaks for corporations, justified with the threadbare claim that the windfalls will convince firms to hire more workers. This ignores, for one thing, the fact that US banks and corporations are already sitting on a cash hoard of over $1 trillion.By way of defending his opposition to public works programs or other forms of government job creation, Obama offered a bald statement of his subordination to big business. “I’ve never believed that government’s role is to create jobs or prosperity,” he said. “I believe it’s the private sector that must be the main engine of our recovery.”New give-aways for corporations in his plan include allowing them to deduct from their taxes the full value of new equipment purchases. He also proposed to increase and make permanent a tax credit for corporate research and development.As for Obama’s proposed $50 billion in funding for transportation development—a tiny fraction of the financial outlay required to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure—it would merely extend existing funding that is currently set to expire, while establishing an “infrastructure bank” that would attempt to secure profits for private investors in public projects.*(THERE ARE NOW 38 MILLION ILLEGALS HERE WITH MORE COMING OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS DAILY!... BUT NOT ALL ARE CRIMINALS! SOME ARE JUST PREGNANT AND WANT 18 YEARS OF ANCHOR WELFARE, AND SOME JUST WANT YOUR JOB!)*All told, the new economic measures would cost about $180 billion. According to economist Mark Zandi, the program might “a year from now… create tens of thousands of jobs.” As the Washington Post noted, “This would be a drop in the bucket compared with the 7.6 million jobs lost during the recession that began in December 2007.”Meager as it is, the proposal has virtually no chance of passing, a fact underscored by its cool reception among many congressional Democrats. “Republicans noted that top Democratic leaders and embattled candidates were virtually silent on the proposals,” the Wall Street Journal observed. “House Democratic leadership aides said they did not want to move forward without assurance that the Senate could pass the measures. And Senate aides gave no such promises.”As always, the Democrats, who hold historically large margins in both houses, claim their hands are tied by Republican opposition. “The only way we can get anything done is with cooperation of Republicans, and that’s been in short supply in recent months,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.What Obama presented as the main difference between the White House and congressional Republicans—whether or not to extend Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy set to expire in January—is also more pretense than reality.Obama claims to favor continuing the tax breaks only for households that earn less than $200,000 a year for an individual or $250,000 for a couple, about 98 percent of all households. But prominent Democrats, including Reid and former Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag, have already signaled their support for an extension of the cuts for the 2 percent with incomes above the cut-off levels as well.*(“Cut regulations for special interests” … OBAMA DID THAT FOR HIS BANKSTER DONORS WITH HIS GEITHNER NO REAL BANKSTER REGULATION. BANKSTER CRIMES SOARING, PROFITS SOARING, AND SO ARE FORECLOSURES!..... OBAMA’S CONFESSION: “We saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits and record bonuses”)*In his speech, Obama sought to obscure the Democrats’ share of responsibility for the economic disaster, pinning blame on the “governing philosophy” of the Bush years: “Cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires. Cut regulations for special interests. The idea was that if we had blind faith in the market; if we let corporations play by their own rules; if we left everyone else to fend for themselves, America would grow and prosper.”“For a time, this idea gave us the illusion of prosperity,” Obama continued. “We saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits and record bonuses… But while all this was happening, the broader economy was becoming weaker... The wages and incomes of middle-class families kept falling while the cost of everything from tuition to health care kept rising. Folks were forced to put more debt on their credit cards and borrow against homes that many couldn’t afford in the first place. Meanwhile, a failure to pay for two wars and two tax cuts for the wealthy helped turn a record surplus into a record deficit.”These remarks reveal the Obama administration’s contempt for the intelligence of the public. The White House seems to assume that the American people are suffering from collective amnesia.The policies of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation have long been bipartisan. They were expanded during the Clinton years.And they have continued under Obama. One wonders whether Obama and his handlers think the public has forgotten that Obama supported the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street under Bush and extended it once he came to power. And that Obama intervened to block legislation that would have imposed modest restrictions on the pay of bank executives, while insisting that government loans to General Motors and Chrysler be made contingent on a 50 percent wage cut for newly hired auto workers.In its staggering dishonesty, the administration’s public relations campaign on the economy is strikingly similar to its effort during the BP Gulf catastrophe to appear “tough,” even as every step it took had as its overriding concern the protection of oil giant’s profits. Last spring Obama staged a visit to the Gulf, followed by a White House meeting with BP executives and a prime-time press conference to present the $20 billion cleanup fund—set up according to BP’s requirements—as a great boon to workers and small businesses victimized by the company’s negligence and criminality.Similarly, the White House has stage-managed a series of events this week to package another bonanza for the corporate-financial elite as a lifeline to the “middle class.”Yet even as Obama attempts to pose as an advocate of jobs and the middle class, the White House has been at pains to refute any notion that the latest proposals constitute a “stimulus,” or that they will significantly add to the deficit.“I am absolutely committed to fiscal responsibility, which is why I’ve already proposed freezing all discretionary spending unrelated to national security for the next three years,” Obama declared, referring to his long-term budget plan dubbed “A New Era of Responsibility.”The speech was two-faced throughout. Appealing to elderly voters, he promised to fight “the efforts of some in the other party to privatize Social Security, because as long as I’m president, no one is going to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street.”But minutes later, Obama signaled to the ruling class that he was preparing, after the elections, to impose harsh cuts in basic entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. “[O]nce the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work,” Obama said, “I will spend the next year making the tough choices necessary to further reduce our deficit and lower our debt.”Obama was referring to his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which in December—one month after the elections—is expected to propose a series of “reforms” of Social Security, including reductions in benefits, an increase in the retirement age, and the introduction of private “add-on retirement accounts.” (See “US ruling class prepares attack on Social Security”)Obama is playing his role in a carefully orchestrated political act. The media incessantly claim that the primary concern animating voters is their fear of “deficit spending,” and that businesses have frozen hiring due to excessive government intervention from the Obama administration. This is counterposed to the Republicans’ central policy goal—the extension of tax breaks for the extremely wealthy and the rejection of any form of assistance to the vast majority of the population.In reality, both the Democrats and Republicans are committed to making the population foot the full bill for the economic crisis, the bailout of Wall Street, and the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.*

EVEN WITH THIS NATION’S STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT, OBAMA’S ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKERS WILL CONTINUE WITH HIS NUMEROUS NON-TRANSPARENT AND DISGUISED FORMS OF AMNESTY FOR THE 38 MILLION ILLEGALS IN THIS COUNTRY AND OUR JOBS!

“On the same day as his visit to the Chrysler plant the Commerce Department reported that American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter—the highest figure since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago.”*“The central aim of the administration is not providing skills or decent-paying jobs, but closing the gap between the wages of US workers and their brutally exploited counter-parts in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In this they have the full support of the UAW.”*At Indiana Chrysler plant Obama hails revival of auto industry profitsBy Jerry White 24 November 2010President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a joint appearance at a Chrysler transmission factory in Kokomo, Indiana Tuesday afternoon to promote last year’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.Facing popular anger over his administration’s indifference to the victims of mass unemployment and foreclosures, the president’s handlers no doubt hoped the event would help Obama “reconnect with the people,” particularly after the Democrats’ debacle in the mid-term elections.Instead, the event underscored the chasm between an administration that has done everything to defend the banks and corporations, and the working class, which has faced an unrelenting attack on jobs and living standards beginning with the forced bankruptcy and restructuring of GM and Chrysler.On the same day as his visit to the Chrysler plant the Commerce Department reported that American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter—the highest figure since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago.As always, the audience of “workers” was a carefully vetted group guaranteed to raise no criticism. These included UAW officials in Obama T-shirts, supervisors and state and local politicians who gave the president and vice president a standing ovation as they entered and applauded on cue during the speeches.Before speaking, Obama welcomed Chrysler/Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. According to a recently published account, during the auto bailout Marchionne declared that auto workers needed to accept a “culture of poverty” rather than a “culture of entitlement,” attacking, among other things, retiree health care benefits.The president also gave a warm welcome to UAW President Bob King. The White House awarded the UAW a majority ownership stake in Chrysler in exchange for its collaboration in the destruction of the jobs, living standards and working conditions of workers at the third largest US automaker. Last week King celebrated the launching of the General Motors’ IPO—a stock sale that netted more than $3 billion for the UAW executives—by joining GM CEO Dan Akerson for the opening bell ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange.Finally, there was the Democratic Party congressional delegation from Indiana. This included Congressman Andre Carson, who recently demanded that workers at GM’s Indianapolis metal stamping plant accept a 50 percent wage cut in order to attract a new buyer for the factory.In his introductory remarks, Biden said the administration came into office amidst the worst economic crisis in generations and had outlined an economic plan to “help communities, save and create jobs and lay the foundations for a sustained growth of the US economy.”But the vice president made it clear that the foundation for this growth was a drastic and permanent reduction in the wages and benefits of industrial workers. Before bailing out the auto companies, he said, the White House insisted they “had to change things, get leaner, tougher competitively.” The auto industry was in a “new era,” he said, and was “hiring again.”In fact, new auto workers throughout the industry are being hired at $14 an hour, half the wages traditionally paid to auto workers. This and other attacks on health care, pensions and working conditions was the precondition set by the White House to bail out GM and Chrysler.Biden boasted that the auto and auto parts industry had created 75,000 jobs over the last year—a figure that pales in comparison to the more than a quarter of a million jobs Detroit automakers alone have wiped out over the last seven years.The situation in Indiana is particularly dire. Over 100,000 industrial jobs have been wiped out in Indiana since the recession began. The Indianapolis Star reported Tuesday that 560,000 state workers—18.1 percent of the workforce—was drawing unemployment, had fallen out of the labor force, or was being forced to work part-time.In his remarks, Obama asserted that the economy was heading in the right direction. He said he was happy that “after a couple of tough years the plant is running at full capacity.” This evoked a delayed applause, perhaps because—as one worker at the plant told the WSWS—there are now only 3,000 workers employed at the transmission and casting complex in Kokomo, down from 6,000.The president acknowledged that success at one plant “does not mean that people in Kokomo are not still hurting” and that throughout the country “millions are still looking for work.” As a sign of progress, he said, the city’s unemployment rate had fallen from 20 percent to 12 percent—an indication of what the administration apparently considers the new normal.In a brief review of events leading up to the bailout Obama indicated that his administration was concerned over the potential economic and social upheaval that would have resulted from the outright liquidation of GM and Chrysler. “We knew millions of jobs were in the balance and that the collapse of the auto industry would lead to a deeper collapse of the economy,” he said.In fact, the administration and the Wall Street investors it put in charge of the Auto Task Force decided to exploit the crisis to push through a historic rollback in the wages and conditions of auto workers. This succeeded in making the auto industry an attractive investment for the same financial speculators who precipitated the economic meltdown in 2008.“We decided to stand behind the auto industry if the CEOs did what was necessary to be competitive and if they had the cooperation of the workers taking pride in what they made. Today we know that was the right decision,” Obama said, pointing to increased profits and “stock investors” who “expressed their confidence” in the GM IPO last week.In remarks that won loud applause from the UAW officials, Obama played the “Buy American” nationalist card. “The most important contest we face is not between Democrats and Republicans but between America and our economic competitors,” Obama said. “We don’t want to cede anything to China—we want to make sure workers have the skills to compete.”The central aim of the administration is not providing skills or decent-paying jobs, but closing the gap between the wages of US workers and their brutally exploited counter-parts in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In this they have the full support of the UAW.Obama concluded by announcing that Chrysler had decided to invest another $800 million in the Kokomo facility, without mentioning what concessions the UAW had granted in return or what other plants would be shuttered or face layoffs instead.“There’s always a price to be paid,” Chris, a Kokomo transmission worker, told the WSWS. “We would like to know what the UAW gave up. They are already hiring temporary workers whose top wage is $16 an hour and outside contractors who only make $14.“The union is more interested in profits than in people. They measure success in profitability, not how many workers are employed or the wages and benefits they receive. That has all been taken away with a stroke of a pen. The $28 an hour wage is gone forever. With all that Bob King has said about ‘partnership’ it’s just a matter of time when we all see wage cuts—we expect that in the next contract.”As for the claims that things were getting better in Kokomo, Chris, who was born and raised in the city, told the WSWS, “Kokomo used to be booming with industry and was called little Detroit because of the iron, steel, canning and printing industry. Now all of that is non-existent. Delphi has less than 1,000 workers and there is no work other than a bunch of restaurants. Throughout my life I’ve seen the deindustrialization of the city.”

*“A union-free America. Growth down a little, employment down a lot. Profits and productivity up, wages flat. Health-care costs up for workers, down for employers. The return of a thriving middle class? Dream on.” *Hard times for workers on Labor Day 2010By Harold MeyersonMonday, September 6, 2010; A15 On Labor Day 2010, the state of America's workers is appalling. Millions have lost their jobs. Millions have had their lives put on hold or thrown into reverse. Granted, it's a global recession. The state of the world's workers -- at least in the advanced democracies -- should be equivalently appalling. But it's not. The Great Recession has taken a far greater toll on our nation's workers than on workers in similar countries, even those whose economies have dipped more steeply than ours. Consider: As of this year, U.S. gross domestic product is about 1 percent beneath its 2008 peak, compared to a drop of roughly 2 percent in France and Germany and 5 percent in Britain and Japan. But U.S. unemployment has increased roughly 5 percentage points since 2007, compared to just 1 point in France and Japan and 2 in Britain. In Germany, unemployment has actually dropped a point since the recession began. No wonder Christina Romer confessed bewilderment at the scope of American job losses in her valedictory speech as head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers last week. American employers have responded to recession with far more layoffs than their counterparts in comparable or even worse situations in other nations. One reason for this anomaly is that productivity has surged in the United States, enabling employers to maintain output with far fewer workers. For those workers still on the job, though, this story seemingly should have a happy ending: Sustained production with fewer workers should equal higher wages, should it not? It should, but it hasn't. As Andrew Sum and Joseph McLaughlin of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies have documented, pretax corporate profits increased $388 billion from the low point of the current recession, the second quarter of 2009, to the third quarter thereafter, while wages increased just $68 billion. At a comparable point in the 1981-82 recession, corporate profits came to just 10 percent of the combined uptick in profits and wages. This time around, they amount to 85 percent. If you've wondered how big banks' profits have rebounded to pre-crisis levels and how American corporations have come to be sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash -- even as unemployment remains well above 9 percent -- wonder no more. They have pocketed their revenue, neither resuming lending (if they're banks), nor rehiring laid-off workers nor giving raises to those who have continued to work for them. A similar tale can be told about employers and health insurance, the costs of which have continued to rise. It's not the employers, however, who have borne those increases. A survey, released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, shows that employee premiums rose 13.7 percent over last year, while the amount that employers contributed dropped -- dropped! -- 0.9 percent. Only a purblind ideologue could miss the pattern here. American employers -- more than employers in other nations and more than American employers in earlier downturns -- have imposed the costs of the recession and, increasingly, the costs of doing business, on their workers, and kept for themselves damn near all the proceeds from doing business. What gives? Are American employers meaner than their European counterparts and American forebears? I doubt it. The difference is that American workers have markedly less power than their European counterparts and their American forebears. That's partly because unemployment remains so high here. More fundamentally, though, the U.S. private sector is almost entirely -- 93 percent -- nonunion. Unlike European workers, unlike their own parents and grandparents who lived in a much more heavily unionized America, U.S. workers are now powerless to stop their employers from pocketing all the change. The source of this problem is outlined in two reports scheduled for release Monday from two very different organizations, the liberal Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, an organization with a staunch Lane-Kirkland-esque antipathy toward authoritarian regimes left and right: Through the weakness of our labor laws, the reports say, private-sector American workers can no longer form unions. Human Rights Watch documents how corporations that are model (and highly profitable) employers in Europe and frequently collaborate with unions there descend to American employer norms -- denying workers the right to join unions -- when they come over here. Freedom House, citing the near-impossibility of forming unions in this country, laments that the United States cannot be classed among the 41 nations that afford their workers full freedoms. A union-free America. Growth down a little, employment down a lot. Profits and productivity up, wages flat. Health-care costs up for workers, down for employers. The return of a thriving middle class? Dream on. And a happy Labor Day, one and all. *

THE ONLY OBAMA JOBS PLAN THAT HAS EVER BEEN, OR EVER WILL BE IS CALLED AMNESTY!

“Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.” WSWS.ORG

Wsws.orgObama on Labor Day: No measures to address jobs crisis7 September 2010In a speech delivered to mark Labor Day in the US, President Obama made clear that there will be no significant government measures to address the most severe jobs crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday, Obama trumpeted a plan for investment in infrastructure and transportation as a significant jobs program. Despite efforts by the media to play up the announcement, it quickly emerged that the administration is simply asking Congress to reauthorize a bill that is routinely passed every five years. His proposal for spending is little changed from previous years.According to a White House fact sheet, the administration is proposing that Congress “front load” the Department of Transportation spending bill by about $50 billion, saying that this would create jobs as early as 2011. The administration did not propose a total figure for the bill, which will likely not be debated until after the mid-term elections in November. In 2005, the Bush administration signed a transportation bill that cost $286.4 billion over five years, or just under $50 billion a year. The money goes to states and localities to fund road and infrastructure projects and regular upkeep.The figure proposed by Obama is not only grossly inadequate in comparison to the decayed state of American infrastructure, it will not begin to address the jobs crisis. It even pales in comparison to the administration’s own inadequate $787 billion dollar “stimulus” bill last year, which consisted largely of tax cuts and handouts to private companies.Administration officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no new major stimulus bill in the works, let alone a program of direct government hiring. Obama is expected to announce a number of additional “jobs” measures later this week, including the extension of tax cuts for corporations and small businesses.The administration has also pledged that all these measures will be “fully paid for,” continuing on the theme of budget cutting and fiscal austerity. While hinting at ending various tax loopholes for energy companies, payment will also likely include cuts in social programs—like those carried out with the last extension of unemployment benefits, which was accompanied by a reduction in funding for Food Stamps.Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.The latest jobs report—showing a loss of 54,000 jobs in August—underscores the bleak outlook. The official unemployment rate, which vastly underestimates the real number of jobless workers, is expected to remain at around 10 percent at least through 2011. Of the 15 million who are officially unemployed, 42 percent have been out of work for more than six months, while millions are running out of their meager unemployment benefits.To the extent that the administration has a jobs policy, it is the revival of a section of US manufacturing on the basis of closing the wage gap between US workers and their brutally exploited counterparts in Asia. Already, the level of exploitation of American workers has increased significantly. While labor costs for companies are falling at the sharpest rate in decades, productivity has surged—that is, workers are being forced to do far more for much less.Sergio Marchionne, the head of the Italian auto company Fiat, summed up the thinking of the corporate elite in remarks recounted in a soon-to-be-released memoir by Steven Rattner, the Wall Street investor turned head of Obama’s Auto Task Force. According to Rattner, Marchionne told then-United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger that workers needed to accept a “culture of poverty” rather than a “culture of entitlement.” Fiat was negotiating a partnership with Chrysler at the time, under the direction of the Obama administration, which was demanding that workers accept massive concessions and job cuts.The determination to force workers to submit to a “culture of poverty” is shared by both political parties—and, for that matter, the UAW, which is presently doing everything it can to enforce such a “culture” on workers in Indianapolis.Labor Day in the US has always been about containing class struggle. It was invented as a replacement for International Workers’ Day, May 1, in a deliberate attempt to separate American workers from their class brothers and sisters around the world, who are facing similar conditions. The day has become an empty ritual, allowing trade union officials to join hands with political representatives of the capitalist class in a hypocritical celebration of the American worker.No amount of posturing, however, can conceal the fact that all these figures—including the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, who joined Obama on Monday in Milwaukee—are engaged in an all-out offensive against the working class.Politics in America is characterized by an immense vacuum. There is an enormous disparity between the social and economic strength of the working class—which today represents a far higher proportion of the population than ever before—and its political influence.Over the course of US history, American workers have engaged in insurrectionary class battles and were able to win significant concessions in the face of the bitter resistance of the capitalist class. Politically, however, the working class has remained tied to the Democratic Party, and through it, to the capitalist system. The Obama administration is once again demonstrating the consequences of this subordination: in all its policies, foreign and domestic, it has upheld the interests of the corporate and financial elite.There exist many organizations that continue to seek to bolster support for the Democratic Party—from the trade unions and Obama’s liberal supporters, to supposedly “left” or “socialist” groups such as the International Socialist Organization. These tendencies, however, have today a marginal political influence in the working class itself. This was demonstrated by the negligible turnout at the “jobs” march organized last month in Detroit by the UAW and sections of the Democratic Party establishment, with the full support of the Democratic Party’s various auxiliary organizations. (See, “The Nation on the Detroit march for ‘Jobs Justice and Peace’”)The growth of the class struggle is inevitable. New mass struggles of the working class will develop outside of the existing framework of political life. To lead these struggles, the building of an independent political party of the working class, in opposition to the corporate-controlled Democratic and Republican Parties, and based on the fight for socialism, is the most pressing necessity.Joe Kishore and Jerry White

Enforcement On ICE Posted 08/27/2010 07:03 PM ET Politics: If there's one agency that's been made useless by its leaders, it's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If, under a new policy, being here illegally is no longer reason enough for deportation, why does it still exist?The Obama administration has effectively declared open borders to millions of would-be illegal immigrants — not through legislation, but with a sneaky policy move.On Aug. 20, its man at ICE, John Morton, wrote a memo stating that being in the U.S. illegally is no longer sufficient reason to send someone home. An illegal immigrant now has to be a security threat or else commit a crime — and a violent one at that. To everyone else, ICE turns the blind eye.Director Morton says it's a matter of priorities. But make no mistake: This is amnesty by another name.Adding insult to injury, ICE will empty its costly, just-built detention centers of 17,000 existing deportation cases as long as an illegal can show that he or she has applied to become legal.This, says the New York Times, will "pare huge case backlogs." And to ICE bureaucrats, it's proof they're doing their jobs.In fact, it's an astonishing abrogation of duty. The policy turns ICE into a $6 billion border-jitney service for the subset of illegals who were picked up by other law enforcement agencies, convicted of violent crime and have served their time, and whose jailers didn't forget to put them on an "immigration hold" list.Any others can make themselves at home.That goes for the Mexican Zeta cartel members who are busy recruiting assassins in barrooms around Phoenix, as Fox News reported Friday.Nothing violent about recruiting, you know — and that goes for illegal immigrants who've illegally voted in U.S. elections.In the latter case, Fox reported that ICE itself helpfully sent a form letter to an illegal who admitted doing that, coaching him to take his name off the voter rolls first so his application could go through smoothly. ICE didn't mind that the man had admitted to committing a felony. The bureaucrats just wanted to issue him his U.S. citizenship so they could clear the backlog.It also goes for the Mexican cartel members who may be buying off city governments like that of Cudahy, Calif., which is under FBI investigation. It also goes for illegal immigrants who invade rural properties at night in Arizona, terrifying ranchers.Not surprisingly, there's no one angrier about this mission-nullification than ICE agents themselves. Last June their union issued a letter expressing a membership consensus of "no confidence" in Morton and Assistant Director Phyllis Coven.They have "abandoned the agency's core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed their attention to campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty," the agents declared.By extension, no one's happier than the Mexican cartels that have muscled into the immigrant-smuggling business, making about a third of their income from fees charged for such assistance.Morgan's no-deport policy is just the enticement they need to bring in new business that will fatten up the fee income they use to make war on the Mexican state.Last Monday's discovery of a massacre of 72 would-be illegals in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on their way to Los Angeles makes clear what lies ahead. Human smuggling is an evil ICE should not encourage.The cartels are monopolies that make $500,000 or so per human "load" into the U.S., but they also press many illegals into becoming foot soldiers. Some are forced into sex slavery, and others — as the sole survivor of the Tamaulipas massacre claimed — are ordered to become cartel assassins in the U.S. — or else.The fact that the U.S. no longer enforces immigration laws for anyone except those with violent criminal or terrorist convictions will draw would-be immigrants into this racket like a magnet.At a time when U.S. diplomats' families have been ordered to evacuate the consulate in Mexico's second-biggest city, Monterrey — as happened Friday — any encouragement of illegal immigration works at cross purposes to the real national security mission of defeating cartels.ICE leaders talk smugly about "priorities," but they've effectively abandoned their agency's core law-enforcement mission and become servants of the immigration lobby. ICE should be allowed to do the job it's tasked with. Failing that, it should be disbanded.*MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

THE OBAMA IMMIGRATION POLICY:

NEUTER I.C.E., AND PUT AN OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATE TO HEAD IT.

STOP THE BUILDING OF THE WALL.

TAKE 600 BORDER GUARDS OFF THE BORDER, THEN PUT 1,200 IN DESK JOBS.

SUE LEGALS IN ARIZONA AS THE MEX DRUG CARTELS MAKE DOG FOOD OF OUR TERRORIZED BORDERS!

SABOTAGE E-VERIFY.

FILL THE ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS, SUCH AS HILDA SOLIS.

HISPANDER FOR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES.

…. There’s nothing new to any of this. Obama’s “change” merely meant we faced the accelerated verison of BIT BY BIT AMNESTY under Bush, Hillary, Billary and Bush2.

“BUT REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SAID THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WAS MOVING TOWARD A DE FACTO LEGALIZATION PROGRAM BY ALLOWING SOME ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO REMAIN HERE DESPITE THEIR VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW!”

“…and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country.” *HISPANDERING:

“The memo encourages ICE officers and lawyers to use their authority to dismiss those cases, canceling the deportation proceedings, if they determine that the immigrants have no criminal records and stand a strong chance of having their residence applications approved.”

NEW YORK TIMES – MEX OWNED MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA PROPAGANDA

August 26, 2010Immigration Agency Ends Some Deportations

By JULIA PRESTONImmigration enforcement officials have started to cancel the deportations of thousands of immigrants they have detained, a policy they said would pare huge case backlogs in the immigration courts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the new approach was part of a broad shift in priorities at the agency, to focus its efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes or pose a national security threat. The policy — announced in an Aug. 20 memorandum from John Morton, the head of the agency — drew praise from immigrant advocates, who called it a common-sense strategy, and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country. *OBAMA HAS FILLED HIS ADMINSTRATION WITH PRIMARILY LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS. Here’s his Sec. Labor, HILDA SOLIS:While in Congress, she opposed strengthening the border fence, supported expansion of illegal alien benefits (including driver's licenses and in-state tuition discounts), embraced sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with federal homeland security officials to enforce immigration laws, and aggressively championed a mass amnesty. Solis was steeped in the pro-illegal alien worker organizing movement in Southern California and was buoyed by amnesty-supporting Big Labor groups led by the Service Employees International Union. She has now caused a Capitol Hill firestorm over her new taxpayer-funded advertising and outreach campaign to illegal aliens regarding fair wages:

*

Michelle Malkin The U.S. Department of Illegal Alien Labor

President Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is supposed to represent American workers. What you need to know is that this longtime open-borders sympathizer has always had a rather radical definition of "American." At a Latino voter registration project conference in Los Angeles many years ago, Solis asserted to thunderous applause, "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not."That's right. The woman in charge of enforcing our employment laws doesn't give a hoot about our immigration laws -- or about the fundamental distinction between those who followed the rules in pursuit of the American dream and those who didn't.

SUE LEGALS IN ARIZONA AS THE MEX DRUG CARTELS MAKE DOG FOOD OF OUR TERRORIZED BORDERS!

SABOTAGE E-VERIFY.

FILL THE ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS, SUCH AS HILDA SOLIS.

HISPANDER FOR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES.

…. There’s nothing new to any of this. Obama’s “change” merely meant we faced the accelerated verison of BIT BY BIT AMNESTY under Bush, Hillary, Billary and Bush2.

“BUT REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SAID THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WAS MOVING TOWARD A DE FACTO LEGALIZATION PROGRAM BY ALLOWING SOME ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO REMAIN HERE DESPITE THEIR VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW!”

“…and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country.” *HISPANDERING:

“The memo encourages ICE officers and lawyers to use their authority to dismiss those cases, canceling the deportation proceedings, if they determine that the immigrants have no criminal records and stand a strong chance of having their residence applications approved.”

NEW YORK TIMES – MEX OWNED MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA PROPAGANDA

August 26, 2010Immigration Agency Ends Some Deportations

By JULIA PRESTONImmigration enforcement officials have started to cancel the deportations of thousands of immigrants they have detained, a policy they said would pare huge case backlogs in the immigration courts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the new approach was part of a broad shift in priorities at the agency, to focus its efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes or pose a national security threat. The policy — announced in an Aug. 20 memorandum from John Morton, the head of the agency — drew praise from immigrant advocates, who called it a common-sense strategy, and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country.

OBAMA JUST HEADED I.C.E. WITH AN OPEN BORDERS – LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER!

The change in emphasis at the immigration agency, which represents a significant break with longstanding practices, has awakened resistance among agents and detention officers on the ground, according to officials of the agency, which is known as ICE, and of the union representing those employees. Mr. Morton’s memorandum refers to a particular group of illegal immigrants: those who have been detained in ICE operations because they did not have legal status, but who have active applications in the system to become legal residents. The memo encourages ICE officers and lawyers to use their authority to dismiss those cases, canceling the deportation proceedings, if they determine that the immigrants have no criminal records and stand a strong chance of having their residence applications approved. The policy is intended to address a “major inefficiency” that has led to an unnecessary pileup of cases in the immigration courts, Mr. Morton said. The courts have reported at least 17,000 cases that could be eliminated from their docket if ICE dismissed deportations of immigrants, like those married to United States citizens, who were very likely to win legal status, the memo says. To resolve that number of deportation cases, officials will have to fix persistent breakdowns in coordination between two federal agencies that oversee the nation’s overburdened and troubled immigration system, ICE officials acknowledged. On one hand, ICE enforces immigration law. Another agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, is in charge of approving applications for immigration documents. When ICE opens a deportation case against an immigrant, it is heard in immigration court. *247,922 CASES IN IMMIGRATION COURTS – THAT LEAVES 38 MILLION ILLEGALS STILL IN OUR JOBS, WELFARE, OR JAILS!*The courts are swamped under a backlog that reached a record in June of 247,922 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University that analyzes federal data. The average waiting time for cases in those courts was 459 days. But immigration lawyers said they are currently waiting as long as two years to get a hearing date in some especially crowded immigration courts. The new policy “is a pretty basic, common-sense thing to do,” said Helen Harnett, policy director for the National Immigrant Justice Center, a legal assistance group in Chicago. She said that if an immigrant’s application for legal residence was ultimately denied, ICE could reinstate the deportation. “This is for people who do have a path to legalize their status,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, director of the justice center. “This does not create a new path to legalization for anyone.”

BUT REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SAID THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WAS MOVING TOWARD A DE FACTO LEGALIZATION PROGRAM BY ALLOWING SOME ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO REMAIN HERE DESPITE THEIR VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW!But Republican lawmakers said the Obama administration was moving toward a de facto legalization program by allowing some illegal immigrants to remain here despite their violations of the law. “Actions like this demoralize ICE agents who are trying to do their job and enforce the law,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “Unfortunately, it appears this is more evidence that the Obama administration would rather circumvent Congress and give a free pass to illegal immigrants who have already broken our law.” Mr. Morton’s memorandum was first reported this week in The Houston Chronicle, which found that some immigrants in Texas had already seen their deportations canceled. ICE officials said they arrived at the policy after conferring with immigration court officials. “This is not a backdoor amnesty,” said Beth Gibson, assistant deputy director of ICE. “It is really about efficient use of docket space and smart use of everybody’s scarce resources.” *WHO LET 167,000 WITH CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS IN??? BUT THEN WHO LET THE NEARLY ONE MILLION (source CNN) MEX GANG MEMBERS IN???*The agency has deported a record number of 167,000 immigrants with criminal convictions in the past year, ICE officials said, an increase of about 43 percent over the previous year. However, dissension in the ranks at ICE surfaced on June 25, when a local of the American Federation of Government Employees representing some enforcement and detention officers announced that it had taken a vote of no confidence in Mr. Morton. *THE OBAMA MISSION OF NO-ENFORCEMENT*The director and other senior ICE officials had “abandoned the agency’s core mission of enforcing United States immigration laws,” the local said in a news release, undertaking “reckless and misguided initiatives” while failing to alert Congress to the need for more manpower and funds for ICE. Chris Crane, the president of the local, did not respond to an e-mail message on Thursday. The national president of the federation, John Gage, said the union had not yet taken a position on the issues raised by the local. Mr. Gage said after several ICE locals had complained, he called a meeting next week of representatives of all of the federation’s locals that represent ICE employees. “I really would like to get some facts,” Mr. Gage said Thursday. “Our ICE officers have real concerns, but there is conflicting information. If there is any increased risk to our people, we will be all over it,” he said. *FAIRUS.orgThe Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement PolicyAccording to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.By Ira MehlmanPublished on 12/07/2009Townhall.comThe setting was not quite the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with a “Mission Accomplished” banner as the backdrop, but it was the next best thing. Speaking at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Nov. 13, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared victory over illegal immigration and announced that the Obama administration is ready to move forward with a mass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens already living in the United States.Arguing the Obama administration’s case for amnesty, Napolitano laid out what she described as the “three-legged stool” for immigration reform. As the administration views it, immigration reform must include “a commitment to serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.” Acknowledging that a lack of confidence in the government’s ability and commitment to effectively enforce the immigration laws it passes proved to be the Waterloo of previous efforts to gain amnesty for illegal aliens, Napolitano was quick to reassure the American public that those concerns could be put to rest.“For starters, the security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,” stated the secretary. Not only is the border locked up tight, she continued, but the situation is well in-hand in the interior of the country as well. “We’ve also shown that the government is serious and strategic in its approach to enforcement by making changes in how we enforce the law in the interior of the country and at worksites…Furthermore, we’ve transformed worksite enforcement to truly address the demand side of illegal immigration.”If Rep. Joe Wilson had been in attendance to hear Secretary Napolitano’s CAP speech he might well have had a few choice comments to offer. But since he wasn’t, we will have to rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s own data to assess the veracity of Napolitano’s claims.According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department. DHS claims to have “effective control” over just 894 miles of border. That’s 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting. As for the other 7,713 miles? DHS’s stated border security goal for FY 2010 is the same 894 miles.The administration’s strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers shuffling paper to be a strategy. DHS data, released November 18, show that administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68 percent between 2008 and 2009. The department also carried out 60 percent fewer arrests for criminal violations of immigration laws, 58 percent fewer criminal indictments, and won 63 percent fewer convictions.While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.In Janet Napolitano’s alternative reality a mere 10 percent of our borders under “effective control” and sharp declines in arrests and prosecutions of immigration lawbreakers may be construed as confidence builders, but it is hard to imagine that the American public is going to see it that way. If anything, the administration’s record has left the public less confident that promises of future immigration enforcement would be worth the government paper they’re printed on.As Americans scrutinize the administration’s plans to overhaul immigration policy, they are likely to find little in the “three-legged stool” being offered that they like or trust. The first leg – enforcement – the administration has all but sawed off. The second – increased admissions of extended family members and workers – makes little sense with some 25 million Americans either unemployed or relegated to part-time work. And the third – amnesty for millions of illegal aliens – is anathema to their sense of justice and fair play.As Americans well know, declaring “Mission Accomplished” and actually accomplishing a mission are two completely different things. When it comes to enforcing immigration laws, the only message the public is receiving from this administration is “Mission Aborted.” *MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com*Lou Dobbs Tonight Monday, September 28, 2009

And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.

*MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.comINVESTORS.com

Amnesty In Disguise Posted 08/10/2010 06:51 PM ET Border: After suing Arizona to assert federal supremacy over states on immigration, it turns out that ICE, Washington's immigration cop on the beat, isn't enforcing the law at all. This is amnesty by another name.Oh, what a hullabaloo the Justice Department made last month over Arizona's SB 1070, arguing before a federal district judge that the law must be struck down because the federal government has "pre-eminent authority to regulate immigration matters."Arizona's effort was depicted as some sort of secessionist usurpation of federal prerogatives, despite the fact that SB 1070 mirrored federal law.Incredibly, Judge Susan Bolton, an appointee of President Clinton, agreed and issued an injunction on those grounds.In practical terms, her decision means that Arizona's 15,000 lawmen could not help federal agents enforce the law on America's largest and most dangerous immigrant-smuggling corridor.Now it's obvious why: The Justice Department isn't interested in enforcing the law.Last week, 259 representatives of the union that represents 7,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents handed down a unanimous vote of "no confidence" in ICE leaders, whose policies keep them from doing their job.Based on those policies, agents can no longer arrest illegal immigrants even if they announce their status on a sandwich board.According to a June 29 memo from ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton, ICE must now "prioritize the apprehension and removal of aliens who only pose a threat to national security and/or public safety, such as criminals and terrorists."Given that all police agencies look for such targets, such a premise is absurd. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, after all, was arrested by a traffic cop, not a fancy anti-terror strike force, in 1995.And aside from wondering why terrorists are being released at all across a border they'll have no trouble recrossing, Morton's policy effectively means no one is looking for illegal immigrants once they make it past the Border Patrol.This is taking pick-and-choose law enforcement to an extreme and runs counter to best police practices, such as James Q. Wilson's "broken window" theory of criminology. This holds that enforcement against minor crimes in an area helps prevent an escalation into more serious crime.ICE's Morton claims the agency has limited resources, so it can deport only 400,000 illegal immigrants a year. From a government agency with a $2.6 billion detention and removal budget, that comes to about $6,500 per deportee, a de facto statement of government inefficiency and waste. And it affects only 4% of all illegal border-crossers.*Tension over Obama policies within Immigration and Customs EnforcementBy Andrew BeckerFriday, August 27, 2010; B03 As it poises for further immigration initiatives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling with festering internal divisions between political appointees and career officials over how to enforce laws and handle detainees facing deportation. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus away from the worksite raids and sweeps employed during George W. Bush's presidency to deporting more criminals and creating less prisonlike detention settings. But ICE, a branch of DHS, is facing intensified resistance from agency middle managers and attorneys, and the union that represents immigration officers. The internal conflict has grown increasingly public over ICE's plans, among them to expand a risk assessment tool to guide agents on detention decisions, cut down on transfers of detained immigrants, and open more "civil" detention facilities -- what field directors call "soft" detention. Immigration officers say the new measures limit their enforcement efforts and the revamped lockups will compromise their safety. In June, their union took the unprecedented step of issuing a vote of no confidence in the agency's director, John Morton, and the official overseeing detention reform, Phyllis Coven. Months before that, the 24 field managers who oversee detention and deportation sent a memorandum to Morton that challenged a number of recommended changes. Current and former ICE attorneys in New York, Houston and other offices nationwide say they are angry that they have been instructed to drop efforts to deport some immigrants. "We can't find a supervisor or manager that supports Morton or his initiatives," said Chris Crane, president of the American Federation of Government Employees' National Council 118, the union that issued the no-confidence vote. Many of the measures, set to be implemented in the coming weeks and months, may not require a conversation with the union, but ICE leadership seeks the union's viewpoint on issues tied most closely to immigration reform, said Beth Gibson, ICE's assistant deputy director. "We are at the beginning of a big push," Gibson said in an interview. "We are about to come up on a series of things I see as incredibly powerful pieces of reform." Crane said the union wants to negotiate over implementation, which could delay some changes. The criticisms of ICE illustrate the obstacles the Obama administration must navigate in selling the changes to the ranks while trying to appear both tough on enforcement and serious about fixing the nation's immigration laws. The friction between the agency's leadership and managers tasked with instituting the changes reflects the nation's split over immigration. A senior White House official, acknowledging the rift between ICE leadership and boots-on-the-ground employees, said the union's unusual posture of addressing policy sent a message consistent with groups that espouse tougher immigration restrictions. "The call from the left is John Morton is too tough. The guy is leading the effort to remove more people from the country than ever before," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. "That others say he's soft on enforcement strikes me as remarkable. At the end of the day, it's about sound law-and-order principles, not decisions based on the political wind." Several current and former immigration officers, senior managers and attorneys, however, said in interviews that the agency's leadership regularly changes course on policy, apparently based on the political climate. Attorneys point to an ongoing review of pending cases and the dismissal of deportation charges against some immigrants without serious criminal records. Michael D. Rozos Sr., who retired May 1 as one of the agency's most senior field managers, said he left his position in Miami "several years early" out of frustration that the agency was moving backward toward the years of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The defunct agency became part of ICE when DHS was created in 2002. "I see a repeat of what the INS was like, which was chasing its tail," Rozos said. "They're trying to go in every direction and end up going in circles." Rozos was one of the 24 field managers who sent a 19-page memo, obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, that outlined objections to an October report widely adopted as the detention-policy playbook. They also complained that their input was never sought. "The Report seems to advocate that an entirely 'soft' detention system would be the ideal," the memo states. "In reality, there is a significant population with criminal convictions, arrest histories, gang affiliation, psychological issues, drug abuse, etc., and these individuals pose a flight risk or security risk to ICE officers, other detainees and, at times, themselves." The "soft" detention facilities will house low-risk detainees without criminal records in less restrictive settings while giving more access to recreation. One of the new civil detention sites, the James Musick Facility, is a non-working farm near Los Angeles, Gibson said. Other lockups will open in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and elsewhere to cut down on transfers. ICE spokesman Brian P. Hale said the agency remains committed to reform, despite the internal rumblings. "There are significant numbers that are in agreement and support our effort," Hale said. "Our challenge and ultimate goal is to stay focused and successfully implement our goals." ICE might not be alone in facing a backlash. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in July released a leaked draft memo from ICE's sister agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which outlined administrative remedies if a legislative fix falls short. The memo angered Republicans, who said it proved the Obama administration wants to circumvent Congress to provide amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants. Janice Kephart of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said agents are frustrated because they feel they aren't allowed to do their jobs to fully enforce the law. Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration-reform group America's Voice, said ICE is run by "a bunch of political appointees on top of a rogue agency." Doris Meissner, who as INS commissioner in the 1990s saw similar tensions, said the union's message is a "severe internal pushback." "It is a barometer of how difficult it is to make change and how they have to really work it internally as well as externally," added Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. Though ideological differences pose a challenge, they are not insurmountable, Meissner said, adding that she expects ICE employees to follow the new policies. The dissension, fostered by the country's polarization over immigration, is a product of legislative inaction, she said. "Congress hasn't moved forward with the legislation that the administration envisioned, which puts ICE in the middle of the fray," she said. "The only thing happening with immigration in the country is enforcement." Andrew Becker is a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting. *Obama to Bypass Congress and Grant Amnesty through Executive Fiat?Over the last month, conservatives have speculated that President Obama might bypass Congress and grant blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens currently residing in the United States by way of executive fiat. According to a controversial new “draft” report crafted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), this lawless Obama administration scheme is more than mere rumor. It is a detailed and well-thought-out strategy.According to FoxNews.com:Sen. David Vitter, R-La., on Sunday said he and his colleagues are still looking for answers on whether the administration has seriously considered mass legalization for illegal immigrants, after an administration memo surfaced outlining ways to grant legalization without going through Congress.The draft memo, first obtained by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office from the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, outlines ways the administration was exploring to legalize swaths of illegal immigrants “in the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” The memo describes how to, “reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.”Of course the Obama administration is trying to downplay the significance of the memo. But these denials ring hollow. And no one can deny the intent of the memo.You don’t even have to read past the subject header of the memo to get a clue as to what the USCIS is up to: “Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Illegal Immigration Reform.” Is there any way to misread the objective here? Clearly the USCIS expended a considerable amount of effort trying to sneak this past Congress in order to implement the President’s illegal alien amnesty plan.But even if you’re someone who believes you can’t judge a memo by its title, let’s take a look at some excerpts from the USCIS document so you can judge for yourself. (You can also read the entire memo for yourself by clicking here).• Options The following items - used alone or in combination - have the potential to result in meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.• Allow TPS [Temporary Protected Status] Applicants Who Entered Without Inspection to Adjust or Change Status …Thus, USCIS should no longer adhere to the 1990 General Counsel opinions, and instead permit individuals in TPS to adjust or change status. Opening this pathway will help thousands of applicants obtain lawful permanent residence without having to leave the U.S.• Expand the Use of Parole-in-Place USCIS has the discretionary authority under [federal law] to parole into the U.S. on a case-by-case basis for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit” any applicant for admission…Granting parole to aliens in the U.S. who have not been admitted or paroled is commonly referred to as “parole-in-place” (PIP). By granting PIP, USCIS can eliminate the need for qualified recipients to return to their home country for consular processing, particularly when doing so might trigger a bar to returning.• Lessen the Standard for Demonstrating Extreme Hardship …By statute, DHS has discretion to waive these grounds of inadmissibility for spouses, sons and daughters of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents if the refusal to admit these individuals would result in extreme hardship for their qualifying relatives. Generally the “extreme hardship” standard has been narrowly construed by USCIS. To increase the number of individuals applying for waivers, and improve their chances for receiving them, CIS could issue guidance or regulation specifying a lower evidentiary standard for “extreme hardship.”• Increase the Use of Deferred Action …USCIS has previously allowed the use of deferred action to provide relief to non-immigrants whose period of admission had expired, or otherwise had failed to maintain lawful immigrant status…While it is theoretically possible to grant deferred action to an unrestricted number of unlawfully present individuals, doing so would likely be controversial, not to mention expensive…Rather than making deferred action widely available to hundreds of thousands and as a non-legislative version of “amnesty,” USCIS could tailor the use of this discretionary option for particular groups….The memo goes on for about 11 pages with other recommendations that I cannot adequately cover in this space, so do consider taking the time to read the document for yourself. I’ve reviewed tens of thousands of government documents in my 12-plus years here at Judicial Watch. So it is not insignificant for me to say that this memo is about the most brazen and shocking government document I’ve ever reviewed.Republicans and, eventually, even Democrats are unlikely to let this matter drop. In fact, according to Fox News, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have written to Chairman Leahy demanding the matter be investigated by the Committee: “We are very concerned about the options outlined in the memo and are troubled that the executive branch could be engaged in an effort to inappropriately expand its authority to ensure illegal immigrants are not removed from the United States and are given access to various immigration benefits, including potential green card status," the Senators wrote.Let’s sum up. Obama’s top political appointees in the agency charged with enforcing our immigration laws are spending their time thinking of ways not to enforce the law and how to bypass the elected representatives of the people to grant mass amnesty through a raw abuse of executive power.Obama and his appointees are obviously impatient with the niceties of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. We already knew they’re against the rule of law with their coordinated and dishonest attack on Arizona’s SB 1070. This latest memo shows they’d be happy to throw the rule of law out entirely when it comes to immigration.Judicial Watch is hard at work. We already had a Freedom of Information Act request in place on the secret amnesty plan, and we plan to expand our investigation in light of the new memo.*JUDICIAL WATCHMEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

ICE Won’t Arrest Illegal Aliens Caught In Traffic Stops Last Updated: Tue, 08/24/2010 - 2:53pm In its latest surreptitious effort to protect illegal immigrants the Obama Administration plans to prohibit both federal and local law enforcement officers from arresting undocumented aliens discovered as a result of traffic violations. It marks the third time this month that a covert plan to shield illegal aliens from deportation gets exposed. A few weeks ago the administration ordered authorities to halt the removal of some 700,000 illegal immigrants who are students while lawmakers craft legislation to officially spare them from expulsion. Weeks earlier an internal Homeland Security document revealed that the president has a secret backup plan to grant illegal immigrants amnesty in case Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it. This week’s plan du jour is to shield illegal immigrants who break U.S. law by operating a vehicle without a license or driving recklessly, possibly endangering innocent Americans. A draft policy issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that agency Chief John Morton intends to prohibit his agents as well as local law enforcement officers from detaining illegal aliens stopped during traffic violations.The three-page ICE memo was made public this week by a research organization dedicated to studying immigration issues. Even police departments that participate in the local-federal partnership known as 287(g) will be prohibited from apprehending or reporting an illegal alien in the course of a traffic stop. Federal agents will be forbidden from issuing what’s known as an immigration detainer unless the illegal alien has committed a separate criminal violation. Morton is implementing the new measure in response to the “many concerns” of immigration enforcement critics (i.e. open borders, La Raza movement) who believe local police abuse their authority to arrest “innocent” illegal aliens in order to have them deported. That’s according to an ICE political appointee who discourages cooperation between local and federal authorities.Never mind that local police across the country regularly encounter unlicensed illegal immigrants operating unsafe vehicles, smuggling other undocumented aliens or plotting serious crime sprees. Two of the 9/11 hijackers (Ziad Jarrah and Nawaf al-Hazmi) had been stopped for speeding by police in separate states but were not detained even though they were in the U.S. illegally. Jarrah was ticketed by a Maryland State trooper just days before he boarded United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field, and al-Hazmi, one of the 9/11 masterminds, got pulled over in Oklahoma around eight months before he crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.